CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS Master’s of Architecture 2022-2025
All-College Honors 2024
Kaz Baba Memorial Travel Award Finalist 2024
Gensler Design Center Mentorship Program 2024-2025
Core Studio Award Prize Finalist 2023
Gensler Design Center Award for Excellence 2023-2025
Master of Architecture - Technology Award 2023
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY 2022
Certificate, Architecture - Summer [In]stitute in Environmental Design
SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY B.S. Advertising, Minor - Marketing 2008-2010
Three-time Dean’s Scholar
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY 2004-2007
WORK EXPERIENCE
CHENG + SNYDER
Model Building Intern Dec `24 - Jan `25
CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS
Research Assistant - Digital Craft Lab Jan `24 - Dec `24
Graduate Teaching Assistant Jan `21 - Dec `24
GRADIENT MATTER
Architectural Design Research Intern Aug `24
KEERNSMITH
Architecture Design Intern Mar `23
ZOMES
Lead Carpenter and Cabinetmaker Oct `21 - June `22
BARTLETT CABINETS
Cabinetmaker Jan `21 - Oct `21
RENT THE BACKYARD
Apprentice Carpenter Dec `20 - Jan `21
HEXVENEER
Woodworker, Operations Associate May `20 - Dec `20
UBISOFT
Esports Manager Oct `19 - Mar `20
TWITCH
Esports Product Manager Sept `18 - Oct `19
Associate Product Marketing Manager May `17 - Sept `18
CAPCOM USA
Associate Product Marketing Manager Apr. `16 - May `17
LEAPFROG
Associate Game and Toy Producer Feb. `14 - Dec `15
ACHIEVEMENTS AND FEATURES
Pioneering Biomaterials 2025
Biomaterials Symposium 2023, 2024
Climate as Praxis Symposium 2023
New Look Student Exhibition 2023
Haus Gables Model, CCA Simpson Library 2023-2024
Boy Scouts of America Eagle Scout - Troop 288 2004
SKILLS
3D MODELING AND VISUALIZATION
Rhino, Grasshopper, SketchUp, AUTOCAD
BIM
Revit
REPRESENTATION
V-Ray, Enscape, Adobe Creative Suite Midjourney
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
JIRA, Asana, Notion, Trello, Wrike, Tableau
TOOLS
3d printer, CNC router, laser cutter, pen plotter
Woodworking, millling and veneering tools
LANGUAGES
English, conversational Vietnamese
M'Arch student with 15+ Years Experience in Advertising, Marketing, Production, Design, and Woodworking.
phong.an.tran@gmail.com (408) 564-2734
Issuu: https://tinyurl.com/ptranportfolio
Seen in Stereo
Reframing the Public Library
Fall 2023 - Studio III
Instructor: Neeraj Bhatia
Site: Oakland, CA
Despite the rich history in Oakland’s Hoover Foster neighborhood, it’s been the product of historical redlining, resulting in a reputation of danger and largely pushed aside in the minds from the wider public. Seen in Stereo brings visibility to the rich history and depth of Oakland’s HooverFoster neighborhood despite and within the longstanding effects and challenges of historical redlining. Choreographed circulation and carefully tuned fenestration create specific viewpoints to key locations and landmarks throughout the neighborhood. While residents may be familiar with these locations and pass by them regularly, the library allows them to see it again from a new vantage point. A stroll through the library fosters connections and relationships between pieces of information within the context of the neighborhood and doubles as a living museum with its permanent collection being the views.
Representation sheds color, emphasizing simplicity through line weights and hatches to allow fenestration to frame a living museum of the neighborhood
Specific viewpoints to key locations and landmarks throughout the neighborhood
Informed by its neighborhood through fenestration and a lenticular mural façade
Renders and representation shed color, emphasizing simplicity through line weights and hatches allowing the fenestration to frame a living museum of the neighborhood
1/4” scale sectional model to explore materiality and carry the concept through circulation and transluscent glass
1/8” scale final model illustrates the formal moves, expression of floor plates, and relationship with the immediate neighborhood
The Alemany Oasis
Fall 2024 - Integrated Studio
Instructors: Mark Donohue, Neil Schwartz
Site: San Francisco, CA
Student Team: Phong Tran, Annie Petty, Sebastian Cartright
An oasis is defined as a centralizing form that gives refuge in a time of need offering wells of replenishment. The Alemany Exchange in San Francisco is a farmer’s and flea market open two days a week in the Bernal Heights Neighborhood. Opening in 1947 as California’s first farmer’s market has remained strong despite its less than ideal architecture. The site itself is sandwiched between an excavated cliff of affordable housing at plan North and the two major intersecting highways; 101 and 280 at plan South.
For many the market is already seen as an oasis but only flickers two days out of the week. To us, because of the latent site conditions, our idea spurred an urban strategy which we aim to create a ripple effect throughout the city.
The form of the Alemany Oasis is anchored towards the existing entrance around the hotspot of pedestrian traffic and consists of a modular bay that shifts in elevation and levels of enclosure.
PutnamSt.
PeraltaAve.
Alemany Blvd.
Alemany Blvd.
TompkinsAve.
Our main structure consists of dimensional lumber with three sandwiched 2x12s. The members are cut at precise, repeatable angles and mortises/tenons are built up using additive joinery as opposed to subtractive to minimize waste and be easily assembled on-site with minimal tools.
The Pilkington Glass Co.
Speculative Images: Preservation in the Age of AI
Summer 2024 - Advanced Studio
Instructor: Morgane Copp
Site: San Francisco, CA
This advanced studio was focused on image making as a tool to convey speculative scenarios in which the new and the old converge. Work began with translations and mediations of AI-generated images, stitching images together seamlessly or curating them to “not fit”. This work foregrounds agency as a storyteller and tackles questions of realism and para-fictional realism in the age of AI.
The project focuses on existing buildings in San Francisco’s Design District where the typologies range from warehouses to vernacular buildings to low rise stucco structures. It imagines the consequences of densifying in place where an alternate, mixed, and juxtaposed architectural aesthetic begins to emerge.
The resulting image on the previous page is the Pilkington Glass Co. building, a fictional industrial building, originally clad in brick that survived the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. It embodies the company’s transition through the years manufacturing ribbon and float glass, but most especially, fiberglass used in facade restoration.
Midjourney was used to generate starting images.
"/imagine A large, multi-story San Francisco building in the Sunset District whose facade features mixed materials. Elevation view photograph using a medium format camera."
The initial results were very symmetrical with identical stacked floor plates. The process was cyclical and in order to introduce variation, parts and pieces from the images were manually collaged together and fed back into Midjourney.
"/imagine (collaged image above as reference) A large, multi-story San Francisco building in the Sunset District whose facade features mixed materials. Elevation view photograph using a medium format camera."
While results from the collaged image being fed back into Midjourney were successful, the resulting form is primarily angular and boxy. To introduce additional finishes such as painted surfaces, curtain walls, and columns, images were blended with a classmate’s blended image from a San Francisco Industrial building and Le Corbusier’s Roncham Chapel.
The results of the blend were very promising as Midjourney understood to utilize multiple materials right next to one another. Window sizes were not only varied but the clarity of glass as well. Curtain walls were combined with stairwells, industrial piping and silos were present but not functional. These images, amongst others, provided a kit of parts in order to collage together the final composition. The concept of a glass manufacturing building that survived the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake started to take shape. It helped explain why the building had brick, multiple styles of glass, and the suspicion that some facades were actually fiberglass panels to help with restorations.
Using the collaged kit of parts image as reference, a 3d model of the facade was created to produce a render.
The final render is placed within the image, replacing the AI collaged one. It is not strictly better or more accurate than the AI collaged one but stands as one that makes decisions on depth, materiality, and program.
This 3D printed version of the model at 1/8” scale is the result of about 35 hours of printing time with approximately 30 individual parts. After assembly, lighting was set up in order for the photo to match closely with the images. In order to print the model, the rear had to be modeled and it brought the opportunity to make decisions about floor plates and stair locations.
A Center for Ecological Stewardship
Spring 2023 - Studio II
Instructors: Adam Marcus, Margaret Ikeda
Site: San Francisco, CA
Flutter
Flutter is a design concept for the San Francisco Presidio Nursery, parametrically conceived and with careful, holistic attention towards ecological stewardship. Conceptual design began withT an analog approach to formulate tectonic and spatial strategies. Axes were pushed and pulled in parallel and when arranged, created undulating roof planes resembling sand dunes, the Presidio’s historical landscape.
Continuing an analog approach, representation was executed with watercolor and hand drawn linework
Site ecology introduced a focus on monarch butterflies and other pollinators who use the area as crucial habitat
CLT panels and LVL columns were chosen for sustainability and an investigation in tectonics and assemblage focused on ease of assembly and potential disassembly
lotuscape
Embedded Intelligence: Nested Fabrication
Spring 2024 - Advanced Studio
Instructor: Negar Kalantar
Site: 2025 World Expo, Osaka, Japan
This advanced studio was focused on exploring nested fabrication ; dividing the global geometry of a complex volume into efficiently arranged components. By converting different formal, material, and technical restrictions into geometric constraints, the stacked components are divided in a way that the first component gives shape to the second. Sited in Osaka, Japan for the 2025 World Expo, lotuscape draws on the main theme of the Expo of inspiring people to start making a small effort for others and our planet. Each individual action accumulates, resonates, and builds change towards a positive future.
lotuscape seeks to architecturalize the lotus pond, and draw focus to each part of it. Lotuses have symbolism across Hinduism, Buddhism, and cultural significance in India, Vietnam, and Japan. It is a multilevel field with a canopy, surface, and an ethereal experience underneath. The flower and its beauty attracts visitors from afar, drawing them towards the pavilion. The stems are a series of nested volumes, when arranged, curl upward and spread out to support a translucent fabric. The walking surface is a series of ribs, laid upon a gridded steel structure and 2D nested to create a subtle landscape with gaps that allow light to spill downward.
The spiraling staircase leads to the underground level where more ribs are present, but they are made of the same translucent fabric above, allowing light and air to flow through. There is something to learn and appreciate every step. We just have to look harder and living in the moment allows us to see what came before to face what comes next.
